


a breath, written on your hand

by redledgers



Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Coffee Shops, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7741927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmates are rare, but when mysterious writing appears on Natasha's arms, she begins to wonder if there is some truth to the urban legend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a breath, written on your hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Study_in_Scarlett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Study_in_Scarlett/gifts).



When the words start appearing on her hand, she really shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone has _heard_ of this phenomenon, but it’s so rare. Grocery lists, reminders to take out the trash, sometimes smudged phone numbers or accidental pen marks. Natasha never writes on herself, never even bothered to consider a tattoo. She hates the feeling of ink on her hands, and wonders if it’s even worth writing something just to let this person _know._ She hopes the rest is true, that when you make the connection, the words stop, but she doesn’t know what sort of connection is expected.

Soulmates are rare, and it’s beginning to sound a lot like urban legend to her. She thinks maybe this is a fluke, but she won’t bring herself to scribble a number or even leave Cyrillic notes to herself on her wrist. For all she knows, this person could be in another state. She can’t tell from the phone numbers—no one changes their cell phone number to a local code when they move. But she has never been interested in love anyway, so she allows herself to determine this randomly appearing writing to be a fluke.

Until she sees a hand reach for a coffee cup at the Starbucks outside her building later that fall. A hand that connects to an arm with the same scrawled handwriting that’s been appearing on her body for months. Natasha almost drops her pastry. With practiced stealthy ease, she glances at the man who reached for the cup and tries to remember the name called right before it came out. She can’t. But now her name is called, and she grabs her own latte. Originally intending to leave and eat in the car, she stops herself when he sits down on a padded chair and clearly attempts not to drink the entire cup in one gulp.

She finds an empty table by the window to eat, and digs through her purse for a pen when she sits down. She taps it, thinking, then sighs and neatly writes “What’s your name?” on her palm. He’s a lefty, she can tell by which hand gets written on the most, and it takes him a bit to notice the new writing. He startles when he does, attempts to rub it off, then looks utterly confused. With an awkward grace, he manages to get a pen from a barista, and sits back down to scrawl “Clint” on his hand.

Clint. So that’s who forgets his keys everywhere and probably has a million girlfriends based on the amount of numbers he gets. Clint, who must also not have believed in soulmates because otherwise he would have been more careful what he wrote on his hand. Or maybe he does believe and hoped it would catch the attention of his soulmate. Whatever it was, she was faced with the prospect of actually introducing herself or leaving this behind and telling him to use a notebook next time he wanted to write something down.

Instead, she writes “Hi Clint. I’m Natasha.” From the corner of her eye, she catches him glancing around the Starbucks, wondering if the other person was there with him. For a moment he sees her writing, looks at his palm, and then she leaves, slipping out of the café with the remainder of her drink. She wasn’t ready.

 

-

 

At work, she scrubs the writing off of her hand. She didn’t know if it faded the way it would on his hand, or whether it disappeared after a while. But she needs to get rid of it. Natasha looks at herself in the mirror, composed and collected the way she always was, someone who didn’t believe in soulmates or true love, but who seems to have had it fall into her lap without warning.

When tentative hellos, an attempt at friendly conversation, and a phone number that was clearly his appears on her arm during work, she tugs her cardigan sleeve down further and only glances once, long enough to memorize the number. At the end of the day, she writes neatly “please stop using your arm as a sticky note.” She’s had to wear long sleeves or sweaters for the past two months in case he forgot he needed to get milk.

A “sorry” appears, then nothing. She sighs.

He doesn’t write on his body for two weeks. Then, once, when he was drunk (she assumed) and she was nursing a glass of wine on her couch, he writes “miss you.” Instead of responding, Natasha grabs a pen and presses the nib to her thigh. “I don’t believe this is happening because I don’t believe in soulmates. But what I do believe is that your writing appears on my body, I hate it, and I don’t know what else to do.”

He won’t see it until he stumbles into the shower, but she doesn’t know this. She thinks he waited to reply, looks at the numbers that reappear on her arm followed by “Thursday 4pm the bakery on the corner of 4th and Lexington.” Then the words disappear.

Natasha refuses to respond. It would be stupid to; she has two days to decide if this was something she wants to do. So she scribbles a note on her fridge pad and puts on a movie. She feels stupid for wanting to look up more information on how soulmates work, feels stupid for hoping deep down that it _would_ work and that she would find someone.

She spends the next two days at work, buried in files because she needs the distraction, and finds herself leaving early on Thursday to go to the bakery. _This is stupid_ , she thinks to herself as she finds parking. He’s there when she walks in, fidgeting with a pen and a balled up napkin. She walks silently and sits down across from him at the small table. He jumps.

He makes to draw a line on his arm, to see if one appears on hers, but she grabs the pen from him. “Who drinks plain coffee from Starbucks?” she asks for lack of a better idea.

“Uh, me?” His eyes are a grayish blue. She ignores the Band-Aid on his jaw. “So you’re Natasha? Sorry about all the…” he gestures to his arm. “I forget shit a lot.”

“Apparently.” Natasha sits up when a waitress comes over to take their orders. Clint orders plain coffee. She orders tea, wrinkling her nose at the thought of bitter coffee. He also orders some sort of weirdly named pastries for them. While he does, she uses his pen to carefully write Cyrillic on the pad of her thumb.

Clint looks down as the foreign letters form, then looks at her, intently watching her finish. “What’s this say?”

Natasha shrugs. The waitress brings her tea.

“Is this Russian? Or something? Are you Russian?”

He asks too many questions. She finds it endearing. He looks like a mess, but she suspects he has his shit together more often than not. Natasha stirs honey into her drink and tastes it. “Do you believe in soulmates?” she asks bluntly.

It’s Clint’s turn to shrug. “Never really put much stock in urban legends. I haven’t had time to do much otherwise. If it were true, more people would write on themselves and doctors wouldn’t go on about ink poisoning. Why, do you?”

“Not particularly.” His coffee comes, and he gulps half of it down. Natasha raises an eyebrow. “So why bother trying to meet me?”

“You wanted me to stop writing. Figured it was worth a shot just to see who was getting my notes.”

They exchange pleasantries, basic information, and set ground rules for ink. Clint impulsively invites her over his house, but she declines. He then suggests they go for a walk to aimlessly wander the streets of New York. She declines that too, on account of her car. “Could I get a ride home then?” Clint asks. “If you want. It’ll save me a trip on the subway.”

Natasha considers this and something inside her prompts her to say yes. She drives him to his apartment in Bed Stuy, and he chats about the things he likes to do (archery and watching television), his job (security), and that he’d really like to get takeout sometime if she ever wanted to come over, now that she knew where he lived.

She texts him when she gets home, both to give him her number and also to tell him she will consider his dinner offer. For now, she will cook herself dinner and renew her membership at the gym she tries to go to every day. At night, she dreams about him, his happy grin when she agreed to drive him home, and she woke up the next morning wondering what had happened to her. Love was not a thing she had time for, but here it was.

 

-

 

The following week, she texts him, asking what he liked for takeout and telling him she’d bring it over. He’s enthusiastic in his response, and it makes her smile. She finds his apartment to be neater than she expected, and knows it’s not because he’s cleaned up in anticipation. The purples and greys tell her the space is completely his, and she watches him move about the space with ease, pulling out paper plates and opening takeout boxes.

Somehow, they end up on opposite sides of the couch, legs entwined, watching a bad movie and Natasha makes a scathing remark, using her chopsticks to emphasize. Clint doubles over laughing, managing to put down his plate before grabbing her thigh and gasping for breath amid his laughter. If it were any other person, she would have snapped his wrist, but she doesn't care, instead laughing with him.

When he gets himself under control, she keeps her gaze trained on him. He surfaces, and she leans forward to kiss him with every ounce of fire that she has left in her tonight. Clint is not a bad kisser. He kisses like someone confident but desperate, someone who thinks he might lose whatever it is that he has. She likes that.

They break for air, and he blinks lazily at her. Natasha smiles, feeling more proud than she expected. She’s mussed his hair. He looks like he’d do anything for her if she asked. And she does ask him something, soft and hushed. It takes him a minute to realize she spoke, but the meaning is still there.

_“Do you believe in soulmates?”_

 


End file.
